Automatic vehicle washes generally fall into two broad categories. The first category comprises drive-through vehicle washes in which a vehicle is conveyed or drives through the wash along a longitudinal conveyor. The second category comprises rollover vehicle washes in which the vehicle remains stationary and the wash apparatus moves relative to the vehicle. Rollover vehicle washes have the advantage that they are very compact and are relatively inexpensive. Drive-through vehicle washes take significantly greater longitudinal space and tend to be more expensive, both from the standpoint of the equipment cost as well as the building and real estate costs associated with the additional space requirements. However, the drive-through systems offer superior speed and wash quality characteristics.
A myriad of drive-through vehicle wash systems have been proposed and successfully implemented. However, these drive-through systems tend to be cluttered and complicated by the necessity of routing one or more utility lines to each work station along the car wash.